I have a project. The plan is to organize the boxes of completely randomized detritus stacked in the basement. The last box I opened had apparently not been explored for almost half a century. As I pulled stuff out of it, old photos, dead batteries, college souvenirs and snapshots from scarce remembered vacation trips, moldy mementos from a long-dead courtship, a miasma of memory farts filled the air. Tiny bursts of recollection like snapshots yellowed and curled. Digging clams barefoot in the tidal flats. The huge black and yellow spiders in the flower garden. The snort of the horses when I came to let them out on a winter morning. The smell of the oak trees surrounding the Buckingham Friends School where I attended grades 1 through 8.

Both Mrs. Rowe and I started first grade together, she fresh from teachers college, I newly graduated from kindergarten. I fell ill with appendicitis one day which scared the wits out of her, but we both survived the experience.
Mrs. Stetson taught the second grade. She didn't like my handwriting, the first in a long line of critics with a similar view.
Miss Yole had third grade. I sat next to Laurie who drew people with square feet.

In fourth grade Mr. Rowe taught us how to make anemometers out of paper cups, and barometers out of bottles of water (I forget how they worked). We measured humidity with a long hair glued to a stick and read biographies of notable historical figures, such as Squanto, out of orange books that were new and smelled nice.
Then there was fifth grade which was commanded by Mrs Haines who was magnificent. As I understand her story, pieced together from many sources over several decades, she was married to a man who proved to be unsatisfactory in some way. Maybe a drunk, or an abuser, or a gambler. In any case, she gave him the boot, took her 2 daughters, and moved back to her family's farm where she lived until the infirmities of great age took her to a nursing home where she ended her days among nurses, doctors, and other residents who loved and admired her.

But before that happened, she was a young mother with no marketable skills who needed money. Back in those distant times you didn't need to have a college degree or even teacher training in order to become a teacher, so that is what she set out to do. As a birthright Quaker I imagine she had little difficulty getting a test run from the local Quaker school, and so it was that she came to the Buckingham Friends School where she enriched the lives of hundreds of 10-12-year-olds over 4 decades.
When I first knew her she seemed old and huge and scary. In fact, she was probably in her 40s, short and solid and only seemed scary because she didn't bother with the perky false cheerfulness people use with children. Instead she spoke to us with the seriousness of one grown-up to another. Heady stuff. She was the very embodiment of “gravitas.” She was one of the last people to use the Quaker plain speak referring to us as “thee” which may have been part of her mystique. Those students she didn't terrify adored her.
She imposed discipline by allowing us to believe that she was omniscient and all-powerful. One of the methods she used to achieve this was to know who had gotten up to what. So when a window was broken or somebody had put caterpillars in the principle's car, she would collar some child on the way to recess who might well have done it, but probably not, and declare “This is a very bad thing thee has done!” The chosen child would then scamper off, protesting innocence, find out who had done it, and report back in a timely manner. Of course neither the snitch nor Mrs. Haines ever breathed a word about the arrangement, and so it was that justice was done and Mrs. Haines's reputation as omnipotent was maintained.
When not involved in law enforcement, she told us about dragon flies and volcanoes and acorns and thrushes and pollywogs. Squirrels and possums and worms. She drilled us in math and introduced us to algebra, geometry, and kindness.

In the end, though, the most important gift I received from Mrs. Haines was the importance of “Why?” There is no more important or powerful question and it can and should be applied to everything.
Why is that politician saying that?

Why is the car making that noise.
Why is that a good (or bad) thing?
Why are there so many mice this year?
Why do I dislike that person
...or like the other one?
Why did I save all this crap?
Well, I have an answer to the last one. When I was a young thing, I thought 5 years was forever, and so looking at school photos from that long ago was sort of like opening a Pharaoh's tomb. And so I put stuff like that into time capsules of a sort, bundles with rubber bands around them, to amuse my future self, although I could not, at the time, have conceived of the amount of time that has passed to reach this moment. But being both a packrat and a casual housekeeper, a truly beatable combination, I find my elderly self thanking my larval stage for this dusty gift of a window to a distant world I once knew.

My first instinct is to deny that I have any obsessions. I am not subject to the sorts of deranged behaviours retailed daily on any of the bizarre daytime television shows that vie for our attention at the laundromat. I am not prone to schizophrenia, paranoia or any of the many phobias that enliven society from time to time. I do not attack strangers at the mall or urinate on the sidewalk. I am a sober and sensible person.
But then I thought what is obsession but a deeply held conviction that is foolish or wrong. As it happens I have great numbers of deeply held convictions. Of course they are sober and sensible convictions and therefore cannot be considered obsessions in stark contrast to other people's deeply held convictions which are pure nonsense at best if not credible evidence of mental disorder.
For example, consider my heartfelt concern for the indignities imposed upon the poor Engish language, battered and bruised by the oblivious abuses of the negligent many. How many innocent infinitives are split on an average day? Tears blind me when I hear something like “I've got to sometimes worm the cat.” Good heavens, don't they hear themselves?
And then there is the gradual drift of perfectly good words with a purpose in life away from their actual meaning to something less. Like “gay” which once meant happy and joyful and now only means homosexual. Or “awesome” which once implied something extraordinary and has now been diminished to bland approval. Like “cool” which has inexplicably retained its original meaning while also conveying bland approval.
However, it is noteworthy that these linguistic offenses are a reasonable target for concern and certainly not an obsession. Much as I would like to deliver the offenders a mighty slap, I refrain. I suffer silently. I forgive them.
Now compare this with the crazy people who obsess over nonsense like shoes or bacteria or Republicans. This is a whole different world of excess. However, these are harmless excesses. Nobody will suffer if you spend all your free time searching online for 17th century buttons or scrubbing your house with Lysol. The ones you need to watch out for are the ones whose practitioners are unshakably convinced that they are not only right but also obligated to thrust their flavor of reality on everybody else. These are the missionaries who have caused more pain, misery, and death than any other single agent.
And this is why it is so important to keep your deeply held convictions to yourself, especially if you know you are right.

There is a phenomenon called The Green Flash. This is a mysterious event that happens just at the moment when the top of the solar disk just touches the horizon at either dawn or dusk. It can only be seen in very flat topography – an ocean will do. To see it you need to be looking at the exact moment of sunup or sundown, so you will need to be up and attentive and staring at the horizon as the sky slowly turns from black to grey and then a red smear will appear and widen and start creeping up the sky and then there is orange and yellow – keep looking – and it becomes brighter as your eyes become dry and gritty and then you blink and you've missed it. Or you could try it from the other end of the day when you drift to the rail, margarita in hand, and watch as the sun slowly lowers itself into the sea. In this case by the time you get to the green flash stage you will be blind from staring into the sun all that time and will also miss it, but at least you will have that margarita.
Spring is like that. You really have to pay attention or you will miss it.
As winter grinds on and the boots accumulate in the entryway and the pockets of your warmest coat begin to bulge with chapsticks and cough drops and wadded-up Kleenexes and unmatched mittens and you are driving into town in late January barely able to see over the top of your wooly scarf, you may notice a tree whose buds seem larger, more optimistic than they were last time you drove by. It's easy to convince yourself of this. Then in February maybe you'll see some ducks on the rare patch of open water on the river that weren't there last week. And before you know it, the open water place loses its ice cover entirely and it doesn't grow back. Then there is an occasional open patch on a wind-scoured field. And then the cardinals are singing and the tiny birds are squabbling and your car starts without that mournful growl you have grown used to. Then there is a fly on the kitchen window, a larder beetle in the sink and one lone mosquito which you immediately crush. Coons start enjoying your bird feeder. The ducks are humping like minks and the geese are eying one another affectionately. All the dirt roads are nearly impassable owing to potholes whose breadth and depth are sufficient to swallow a small car if not a school bus.
But you keep watching while the buds really do fatten up, and the willows become yellow and the mud grows deep and glutinous before it finally drains and solidifies into deep ruts inviting the passer-by to take a graceless pratfall.
Then one glorious day you open the back door and a cloud of goldfinches scatter. You step out in your shirtsleeves and take a long breath of that intoxicating heavy, sweet, green smell that signals the arrival of spring. You walk out among the flower beds, hyperventilating as you go, looking for signs of life and are not disappointed. Even the weeds are beautiful in spring. The brave little crocuses are up. Something you planted last year is showing signs of life although you can't actually remember what it is. You take a long, happy lungfull of that heady spring smell before going off to the shed to find all your trowels and rakes and wagons and shovels.
So there you are for three or four days purging last year's detritus and spreading mulch, smiling at the bulbs that have made a flower for you, saying kind things to the lilacs that are busy making tiny leaves and pausing often to enjoy the warm sun on your back, listen to the cheerful prattle of all the little birds in the woods trying to lead the ladies astray. You feel so benevolent even the chipmunks are cute.
You dig a little flower bed thinking “Delphiniums here.” You get the vegetable garden more or less ready, weed the perennials, spread mulch hither and yon. “An amur maple there, an Alberta spruce up there. A bank of zinnias by the patio. Another peony near the trellis.” Ambitious plans for massive modifications.
Then one day it rains. A nice warm rain but wet all the same, so no digging. Actually a welcome interlude allowing aching muscles to recover. Then next day it's still wet so you spend the day planning where to put another bed and where to put the cucumbers this year.
Then the next day it is 27º and humid. The mosquitos are out and the coons have inexplicably dug a large hole in the garden. The chipmunks have been ferreting around in the perennial bed and a good third of the seedlings have damped off.
Spring is over.
This is not to say that summer lacks appeal. Who doesn't like to kick back on the plastic furniture engaging in idle gossip and soaking up lemonade before ambling down to the water for another paddle up the river, down the river, and back to the lemonade. Or watching those hardy plants that survived their infancy turn into whatever they're supposed to be. Summer is good but it lacks the ecstasy of those few sublime dream days that connect the poles of our year. So transcendent and so brief.
Like the green flash.

When I was five I wanted to fly. Not in an airplane – just me in my red plaid pajamas. And I wanted angel food cake as a steady diet, and I wanted an electric train like the one my cousin, Bill, had, and I wanted cowboy boots and I wanted to spend all day Sunday over in my grandfather's orchard riding around on my father's shoulders eating peaches and dribbling the juice into his hair. My entire bucket list would have fit right in my little red patent leather purse with room to spare.
By the time I was ten my horizons had broadened. I had heard of other places and had memorized their capitols. I had seen pictures of their camels and igloos and sea-going canoes. My bucket filled with longing to stroke the camels and ride the waves in those canoes. The list grew with each new thing I learned or read. I dreamt of visiting Smallville, Africa, Barsoom, Peking, Shangri-La, Australia, Narnia, New York, Pellucidar, the Rocky Mountains. I now knew, of course, that you couldn't fly without an airplane just as surely as I knew that I would never actually get to go to any of these wonderful places which were all equally real and unattainable.
My parents had been to Europe and brought back stuff, so I knew it was real, but all those other places I had to take on faith. I had seen Nebraska on the television featuring the Lone Ranger and, more importantly, Tonto, so I thought there was a good chance it was real and I could imagine myself flashing across its vast flat emptiness on a pinto pony with a hunting party of noble redskins, and I had seen Oz in a book in the library, so who knew whether the yellow brick road might not be gladdening the lives of some exotic folk in a distant highland.
As time and life moved on, desiderata were added and removed in a constant turnover reflecting new information and changes in my own tastes and resources. I gave up all hope of a cloak of invisibility and a trip to Barsoom and added instead an African safari, a trip to a coral reef. In general for everything I took off the list, I put two more things on. My poor list slowly became such a tangled mess of erasures and cross-outs it was hard to keep track of what I had included and what I had excluded. It seemed that the more I did the more I wanted to do. I wanted to travel everywhere. I wanted to speak 20 languages and go somewhere to speak them. I wanted to learn how to make things. I wanted to gain artistic skills. I wanted to have a Really Breathtaking garden.
I actually tried some of these things. I took courses in Japanese, went on an animal tour in Botswana, knitted half a sweater, made 6 or 8 indifferent paintings and some lopsided pottery, grew a lush plot of drought-resistant weeds, and finally realized that I hadn't added anything to that wretched list in a while. In fact it had stopped increasing some time ago, and was now growing smaller.
I thought about this and one day it came to me that for 20 years, the number one spot was occupied by “Move back to Canada” which had not been possible for much of that time, but suddenly I had been released and had now moved back to Canada. So now I was looking around for the new top spot and realizing that many of the follow-up projects had been achieved while I was obsessively focussed on Canada. Meanwhile air travel had graduated from short-term discomfort to full-blown nightmare. I no longer wanted to populate my house with any more half-completed crafts. There was really nothing I badly wanted that I didn't already have.
So I bundled up that ungainly heap of once-thrilling ideas and stuffed it into the wood stove and sat down with an index card to revise my list which now includes:
Have a nice garden
Learn to play Euchre
Find a reliable contractor.
I have already started on the first of these by planting a few tomato seeds and weeding the peonies, but the others? Well, 33% is better than nothing.

My name was Herring Snapper. This is a really awkward translation along the lines of Cross-eyed Girl Who Was Born on a Wet Tuesday rather than Harracom. I can't tell you what my real name was because you can't speak Porpoise. And for that matter, now that I have transmigrated into this new shell, neither can I, but I remember it. It was a lovely name, and apt as I was very fond of herring.
It seems that some things don't come with us as we move from husk to husk, as I am not all that fond of herring today.
Oh, how I loved herring clouds when millions of those flashing, dashing little creatures could be rounded up into a sparkling, writhing ball and then you'd plunge into the middle of it, the flash of their dancing, silver bodies surreal, hypnotic. But then you'd come out the other side with a mouthful, and then do it again and again, in brisk competition with the gannets, whales, and any other hungry passers-by. Plenty for all until it was gone and the sea was empty again. Then, well-fed and content we'd cruise away toward nowhere in particular, looking for our next meal, but without urgency.
Then there were the storms. We kept low as much as we could, and moved away toward calmer seas, where the wind wasn't so cruel. We had to get a breath of air from time to time and that moment, breaking the roiling surface, could be frightening, but also exhilarating in an odd way. It was only a moment of exposure to the surface tumult and then a return to the serenity of the deep. The whole sea throbbed at the height of the storm, like someone beating on a drum full of water.
I miss all that. I miss being able to travel in 3 dimensions, fast and slow and then stop, rest, and look around, suspended. Such total freedom. Then arcing up out of the water and splashing back down, a whole different intoxication.
I remember all this, but only in my dreams. I like to think I was skillful and triumphant in the choreographed hunting parties they talk about on nature shows, but I am at best an indifferent team player now, and maybe that was a carry-over from last time.
As for my next iteration, I have looked around at possibilities and there are not a lot of really attractive ones.
I would love to step into the life of a snow leopard. Such grace. Such beauty. But so near extinction. I would hate to start life on those rugged mountain slopes, the royalty of the crags, only to be brought low by a Russian poacher and my beautiful fur sold to clothe some fat capitalist's tacky mistress.
Or an elephant. Another target of our bloodthirsty species, but perhaps a fighting chance, except for the dangers of climate change. It's worth considering. I would love to be able to make those deep throaty sounds they use to chat with their friends miles away. Or to stroll across the veldt ripping up trees and striking terror in the hearts of lions and leopards and such.
All of the conspicuously fun creatures are at the mercy of the Almighty Us, and we are not going to relinquish our murderous ways, so what else is there? Preferably something we cannot or will not extinguish. Preferably something intelligent.
I don't fancy being an insect. Too many legs and no sign of a philosophical bent.
And not pigeons: too stupid and too twitchy for a good conversation.
A cat? A dog? This is a bit of a gamble. There's a chance of landing a Really Nice life. Loving home with silken pillows and chopped liver, or at least food and a warm floor, but sometimes pet owners get carried away with surgical alterations and euthanasia, not to mention the perils of life in the alleys if the coin toss is unfortunate. There you would have to deal with other hungry residents like larger strays, junkies, rats and what not. Best to steer clear of that world, and that pretty well leaves rats or coyotes.
Back when I lived in Vermont, there was a small patch of woodland up behind my house that played host to a family of coyotes. Every year the local macho men, including some women, would stomp through the woods in their camo and insect spray, clutching their semiautomatics and searching these creatures out because they were attacking their cows. This was nonsense, of course, but it gave them an excuse to shoot something. Right after the annual purge the chipmunk population would blossom. I have a parka with a coyote fur ruff around the hood as a reminder of their vulnerability. So not a coyote, then.
Rats. Rats get a bad rap. They only spread disease if the disease is there to begin with. They can be friendly and fun if given the chance, and they are clever little fellows as is clearly demonstrated by their tweaking the noses of those who wish them ill. It's true their life expectancy even under ideal conditions is pretty short, but it might be a good way station between now and what's next.
So if one day after I have waddled off into The Great Mystery, you hear a gnawing under your porch, be kind. Put a bit of hot dog out by the garage.
And thank you.

Winter 2014
I am shivering in front of the wood stove, looking around my living room and trying to assign a reminiscent value to something in here. I have lived here off and on for 46 years. There should be something.
Of the 10 things hanging on the walls there are 2 pictures I like. One is a stylized clipper ship in an oval mat that has hung right where it is forever; the other is a painting of a lighthouse I bought in Nova Scotia. Or maybe Newfoundland. I have no measurable sentimental attachment to either.
There’s a banjo clock that originated with one set of grandparents or another. It hasn’t worked since The Duchess packed it to bring up from Pennsylvania. One day I plan to dust it.
There are three faded prints that somebody cut out of a calendar or a magazine and stuck into cheap frames.
There is a porcelain hummingbird hanging behind the door that a cousin gave me the Christmas after she came to visit the Duchess. I think the idea was to pretend that she was reconnecting with long lost relatives and not just making sure the Duchess had her name spelled right in her will.
There’s a genuine hand-crafted Newfoundland rug that is only there because there was no other free wall space available somewhere else and apart from all these, all that remains is a pair of candlesticks that look like a pair of cowled and constipated monks. They hang on either side of the wood stove. On guard. I think my father probably brought them back from Mexico or Peru or somesuch. I have no psychic link to them and they trigger no cascade of fond memories.
Having exhausted the catalog of hanging candidates, the attention strays to the furniture. There’s quite a bit. There are nine tables, for example, mostly plastic things acquired from CostCo or Staples. But there is also an old wobbly one that folds down that I have always liked. Who knows? Maybe it’s an antique. Apart from all those tables there isn’t so very much. The elephant in the room is the couch.
This once-proud furnishing was chosen, at Sears, by my father in 1966. He went to the furniture department personally and lay down on all the couches they had in the place to find the one that was, first, of sufficient length, and second, of sufficient comfort, for a satisfactory snooze. Then he told them he would buy it if they would give him a catalog – one of the Manhatten-phonebook-sized ones – not just one of those bacon drainers that come in the mail. They agreed and the very fine couch was soon delivered and may be the only new stick of furniture that has ever crossed the threshold of this old house.
Throughout its early life it sustained many naps by many people. At mid-life, unfortunately, there was a fire which deposited soot everywhere, but it was successfully cleaned and still respectable until 1993 when the first of the cats were introduced.
The first feline wave took a fancy to the region of the understructure that ran parallel to the floor and about a kittens-width above it. They pulled their way along it on their backs while sharpening their tiny needle-like toenails on the upholstery which resulted, after a while, in a whimsical fringed effect. This subtle redecoration was slowed when one of them was struck by a car and the other turned his attention to an upstairs railing.
Soon after this the second wave began as a gentle swell with the introduction of a hyperactive little calico who first drove the first cat into a state of PTSD and then started shredding all the furniture, including moldings, carpets, and, inevitably, the couch. Fortunately, at about this time, the manic little trollop dashed off into the woods and returned in the family way. When the happy day arrived, she broke into my linen cupboard, made a nest in my towels, and filled it full of kittens. In hopes of discouraging this as a permanent arrangement I got a nice box of a perfect size, lined with the finest rags in greater Shoreham, and personally relocated the squealing little packages into it. Then I put the towels in the wash with a lot of bleach and securely fastened the linen cupboard door.
Needless to say my box was rejected and the little family disappeared without a trace for several days until I noticed the mom sneaking around the back of the couch. Close inspection revealed that she had found a hole in the muslin cover that separated the springs and stuffing under the couch from the world at large. She had methodically carried each of her 5 children, one by one, up through this hole and down the full length of the couch to the other end where she had made a nest among whatever she found there.
Evicting the little family was not a trivial matter, short of tearing the couch apart. I would have left them there but for vivid nightmares of somebody strolling in with a beer in hand and flopping down on the wrong end of the couch to a sound like opening a lobster. In the end I lifted up the family end of the couch higher and higher until I could hear squeals of protest and the soft thumps of tiny bodies rolling down the muslin covering. Then I reached in through the hole and fetched them out, one by one.
The astonished and indignant mom just stood there and stared at them like a ninny while they squealed and squirmed on the rug and I sealed up the hole with tacks. But the drama was not over. She knew there used to be a hole there and saw no reason why there shouldn’t be again. So it came to pass that the minute I left the house for a minute she set to work and clawed a hole right back where it belonged and set up the nursery again down at the other end of the couch.
Not to be outdone, when I returned and discovered the status quo ante redux I shook the infants out again and this time left the couch on its end with a suitcase full of books in front of the hole. By this time the chorus of high-pitched squeals was loud enough not only to send the PTSD cat upstairs under a bed but also to inspire the mom to find a mutually satisfactory nest under the piano where they grew, unmolested, to large enough beings that they could be locked outside.
This worked until winter came on again and they had to be let in. Fortunately I was able to hand off three of them so now there were only three remaining. But by this time those three were pretty well grown and right away they started a campaign to reduce the left-hand arm of the couch to dissociated molecules. I didn’t notice this until I happened to spot some of the residue of the padding scattered in clumps around on the floor. They had quarried down through the outer fabric and the padding beneath it and were making good headway on the wood that held it all together. There was clearly no hope of invisible repairs so instead I scouted up a sturdy scrap of canvas and nailed it four deep over the excavation. This lasted for years while the residents clawed their inexorable way through layer after layer.
Meanwhile, time was taking its toll on the fuzzy folks as well as the rest of us and the furniture that surrounds us and one of The Residents first developed a limp and then full-blown paralysis. He could barely get around and spent most of his incontinent final weeks on the couch. I didn’t discover this lamentable condition for some time after he had been leaking into his little corner of the world. As soon as I figured it out I lined the Affected Area with plastic and towels, but the end came soon enough. The travelling vet came and greased the skids into the next world and I scooped up all that soggy stuff and tossed or bleached, and applied some patented Pet Stuff to the couch. It worked miraculously well in eliminating the smell, but still…
Soon, the mom went into mourning which made her feet bleed. Fortunately by this time the couch was perennially covered in old sheets and discarded towels so the bloody footprints were largely confined to these. Happily the condition cleared up quickly and I didn’t have to bleach anything else until the other Resident got a urinary condition and a mercifully brief period of incontinence ensued, followed by another bleaching of the sheets.
I have rearranged the living room since then so that the couch is facing in the other direction, and the remaining cats have started deconstructing the other end of it. I’m not sure why I keep it, apart from the logistical difficulty of getting it out of the house. It’s way too disgusting to sit on. When my brother comes to visit I fold up all the cat bedding and put down a clean cover of some sort, but he usually pushes aside the magazines piled on the end and sits where the cat died instead. Respectable guests are entertained in the kitchen.
And so if any object in that room can be said to bear the burden of heavy reminiscence, I think it would have to be that stolid, long-suffering, disreputable couch, and it would appear that I am pretty well stuck with it until some unborn generation of cats finally tears it down to the last tuft.

There was a talk show on the radio a while ago discussing the pending collapse of Dewey & LeBoeuf, an enormous law firm in New York with branches in 25 countries which had been successfully extracting money from its customers for many years but was now teetering on the thin edge of financial ruin. Its chairman, now former chairman, was the focus of a criminal investigation, and the partners' swollen pay packets had been reduced, in many cases, from obscene to excessive.
Here's what happened: When you are a very large, rich law firm (I use the second person singular advisedly since the Supreme Court has assured us that large associations of venal predators such as huge law firms and other multi-national corporations are people just like you and me). As I was saying, when you are a very large, rich law firm vacuuming money out of anybody who drifts into your sphere of influence, you start to think not only that you actually deserve all that money, but also that the inflow will continue forever; that the well will never run dry. There will always be another mark. So you sniff around the legal hatcheries like Harvard and Yale and entice the more promising cockerels into your nest with the promise of a million or two per annum plus perks and benes and a percentage of whatever they can bring in, and before you know it you have 300 generously compensated partners and a thousand or so lesser beings with houses in the Hamptons.
Then one tragic day the accounting team (a large person such as yourself does not limp along with An Accountant like the rest of us persons, but rather assembles a team with a specialist for any imaginable contingency met by multi-national persons requiring expert sleight of hand) The accounting team stands up in front of the 300 Armani suits and nervously explains that last month's take fell $50 million short of expectations, the rent for the office space housing the head office, 3 floors on Central Park West, is overdue, the electric bill hasn't been paid since Christmas, and the bank is making mean remarks about any further overdrafts.
The room falls silent. The sweaty spokesman scoops up his notes and discreetly slips out the back with the rest of the team, none of them inclined to linger. The meeting continues. Other business is discussed, but nobody is paying attention. A few are making lists of other firms that might take them in.
The next morning three hotshots who have been repeatedly courted by other firms tender their resignations. By quitting time 2 more have found other opportunities. By the following week 25 more defections have been realized and the news has leaked to the lesser beings, the secretaries and paralegals and such as well as the lesser lawyers, the drones who are not yet partners. The exodus spreads.
Soon the ranks of the partners have dwindled from 300 to little more than 200. The news has leaked into the street and the media have taken an interest. And that is how National Public Radio got hold of it and why they were discussing the sad news with two or three knowledgeable commentators. There were, of course, differences of opinion on this point or that, but there seemed to be general agreement that this was a Bad Thing.
I have puzzled over this and have been unable to think of a single reason why this would be a Bad Thing. All those paralegals and sub-lawyers should be able to find a billet with little difficulty. Legal secretaries, by all accounts are in hot demand. The landlord will have no difficulty filling those three floors on Central Park West with somebody who is solvent. All that remains is the rapidly dwindling population of partners who have been taking in no less than $2 million per annum for the duration of their tenure.
Are we asked to make sympathetic clucks over the financial misfortune of people who took in more last year than most of us will see in our lifetimes? Are we to feel sorry for these sleek, perfectly coiffed beings who may have trouble making the mortgage payments on their third house in Vail? Or who will be forced to drive the same Mercedes two years running?
 
Really?